So it’s officially been almost two months since arriving at Heathrow, and I now realize I haven’t made a single post since arriving. My excuse is that I’m horrible at keeping a regular written record of anything; I’ve written maybe five diary entries in the 5-year journal I bought last year.
So I thought, for the first post, I might write about why I wanted to study abroad. People ask me why I decided to study abroad, and usually I mumble something about wanting new perspectives, travelling, etc. But to be really frank, I think it has been an escape, more than anything else.
I’ve always lived according to a big master plan. I thought I had to go to a good school so that I will have a good future (aka well-paying and secure job). I majored in a STEM field partly because it’s most “promising” (again, a well-paying and secure job). I’m going to go to graduate school so that I’ll have the same stable and academic careers my parents had. I used to be so sure; and knowing what I wanted to do has been, more than anything else, comfortable. It saved me from worrying, making decisions, and taking responsibility for that choice; I’ve always been a creature of comfort.
Except recently (and by that I mean for a year or so) the doubts have finally arrived and the familiar conviction has disappeared. I’m afraid that I would not live up to my potential; that somewhere, there is another path for me that is even better for me than my current one. I’m most afraid of the regret; that “I shall be telling this with a sigh/ Somewhere ages and ages hence” like the narrator of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.”
So this is me shirking responsibility and literally running away to a distant land. This is me avoiding the extraordinarily highly qualified, confident, and (unfortunately) high-stress environment of Claremont so that I can get comfortable with my doubts and insecurities. This is me hiding away in a far away city of completely new surroundings, so that all the beauty and novelty would distract me from worrying until I have to have some real talk with myself.
And besides that, of course, London is an absolutely beautiful city. Who wouldn’t want to live here for half a year?
— G1
notclaremont 